You know game that starts with using a motorcycle as a kick booster is going to be extreme. However, detective/demon hunter Dante is quickly whisked to the beginning of Resident Evil Island, where he proceeds to fight with his darkest demons: camera angles. Thankfully, the developers realized what they were doing about halfway through the game, so he starts to actually kick ass. And fill dark souls with light.
(-00:00) We start by immediately getting distracted by a conversation about the classic (!?) anime Inuyasha.
(07:00) Zach started playing Mech Warrior Online again in anticipation of the upcoming Battletech game. (Don’t worry, none of us know what any of the proper nouns Zach is using are either.)
Geremy@lasttimeonvideogames.com,
Tyler@lasttimeonvideogames.com,
Zach@alasttimeonvideogames.com,
or LTOVG@lasttimeonvideogames.com.
You can also go to the show page at plus.google.com/+LastTimeOnVideogames or comment on the site at www.lasttimeonvideogames.com.
Also, you can follow our tweets @LTOVG.
Get ready for some craaaazy fares! Seriously, these people will pay ridiculous amounts for 30 seconds of driving. Of course, at the speeds you're going, it'd likely take them at least 15 minutes to walk there. So, the question become whether $50 is worth 15 minutes of their time. Though, if they're letting these homicidal drivers take them anywhere, probably not, so... poor impulse control?
Come punch out a giant anthropomorphic penguin wielding a hammer with us at
Geremy@lasttimeonvideogames.com,
Tyler@lasttimeonvideogames.com,
Zach@lasttimeonvideogames.com,
or LTOVG@lasttimeonvideogames.com.
You can also go to the show page at plus.google.com/+LastTimeOnVideogames or comment on the site at www.lasttimeonvideogames.com.
Also, you can follow our tweets @LTOVG.
Somehow, I have failed to mention my abiding love for the Tales series on the show. I'm not really sure how that is, as it's a mix of two of my favorite genres.
For those of you who don't know, the Tales series consists of games like Tales of Phantasia, Tales of Symphonia, and the rather more popular (and recent) Tales of Vesperia. If you've never played any of these games, it's a pretty standard JRPG-esque game. You have mostly random encounters, anime styled characters, generally cheesy but enjoyable plots, and a pretty standard leveling system. You also have a tech point system that allows you to master individual combat skills through repeated use. The thing that really sets these games apart is that when you enter combat, you are placed directly in control of one of the characters. Fights then take on a style similar to a 2D fighter where you mash silly combos into the random bug or dog carrying money. The rest of your party, while you may take active control of them, is generally dictated by a strategy that you assign them off of a list. Tales of Phantasia, my introduction to this series, continues to be one of my favorite games. It's fast paced, has some pretty fun plot twists, and a large and fairly malleable world to explore.
However, I'm not talking about this series today. Instead, I'm talking about Star Ocean: Till the End of Time. Yes, it's "Till" and not "'Til" or "Until." I like to imagine it's referring to making a large farm out of the end of the universe.
The reason I mention Tales is because the two series share a common history. If you've ever played games from both, this probably won't surprise you much. The team that went on to develop Star Ocean made the first Tales game. After selling off the property (which I believe has been handled fairly well since), they went on to develop Star Ocean, the first entry in that series.
Star Ocean takes a slightly more open stance on battle. Rather than run back and forth in relation to your current target, as you do in Tales games, you are free to run about the battle field. When you attack, however, you generally make a straight line for your target. This allows you a bit more opportunity to try to avoid attacks, and lends a slightly more realistic feel to combat. Realistic, however, is a relative term, as you're free to fling giant fireballs and create electromagnetic disasters in both games.
I tried to play the original Star Ocean once. I didn't get too far, and I honestly don't remember why. I do remember that each character had an inordinate number of skills, ranging from cooking to swordplay. In the tenderness of my youth, I may have been daunted by the perceived complexity of the system. At any rate, I dropped the game, but remained intrigued by the idea. It probably didn't help that I went on to play Tales of Phantasia roughly twenty times.
Therefore, my first real experience with the series, and, to date, my only experience, was Star Ocean: Till the End of Time. For those of you who don't know, each entry in the series is only loosely connected to the others, mostly sharing a setting consisting of a fairly advanced science fiction universe. The game centers around a young man named Fayt on vacation with his parents and childhood friend Sophia. Fayt, as Alex and I jest, is a space hippie, who just wants everyone in the universe to hug each other. Space pirates attack, there's some evacuation, more space pirates... Things proceed like this until Fayt is stranded alone on a pre-industrial world with a beat up escape pod.
Speaking of which, one of the major criticisms with this game, which I do not
share, is that you spend the majority of the game on a world where the
pinnacle of technology is gunpowder when the setting around you contains
ships capable of traversing the galaxy in a fairly reasonable amount of
time. As far as I'm aware, these games always tend to be that way.
I'm a fairly avid proponent of mixing my traditional fantasy with my
science fiction, and such a setting happens to be a happy marriage of
the two.
I can't talk too much about the plot quite yet without getting into fairly massive spoilers, so I'm going to talk a few moments about gameplay. First, this game shares the hallmark of its ancestors: fast paced open combat. A variety of tactics are available, and can vary strongly within individual characters, much less all the different ones you eventually have access to. You can focus on just punching opponents in the face (hunting Australian style, as I like to say), slinging spells to the same effect, mashing weak attacks that do extra damage to the opponents' MP reserves (since running out of MP or HP kills), or being a support caster. Really, there's opportunity here for you to engage in combat however you feel, which is a refreshing change of pace. However, given the nature of the system, finding combos and chaining between special attacks is highly encouraged, and you'll find yourself just beating upon the walls of your enemies' bodies more often than not.
You also have the ability to, with large sums of money, craft items of varying sorts. There are invention centers across the world that you can cough up some cash to add facilities to. Each character has some skill in every crafting area, and various NPCs around the world may be recruited to further your item making goals. The crafting itself is a little odd, however. Rather than finding materials and attempting to combine them, which has generally become the standard, you pick a team of up to three people to work on something. Whenever you add a member or choose a type of crafting, a cost per attempt is displayed. Higher costs require higher group skill, but yield better items.
When you're ready, you tell everyone to start, and a timer runs down while you're treated to a montage of your team attempting to make things. The actions of each character during the montage are dictated by their skill in the subject, which can be rather amusing at times. Depending on various factors, time will run down and consume your money as each attempt at producing the item is engaged. It's generally a fairly boring process, but also pretty quick. There's a whole system around this, but you don't ever have to participate; it is, in fact, quite possible to beat the game without ever touching it.
The plot is generally well-paced, though it does tend to drag in spots. I went to this game directly after giving up on Suikoden IV, however, so it seemed at the time to be a blazing guided rocket by comparison. I'm going to start getting into some spoilers for what is now a nearly ten year old game. I'd be surprised if you haven't played it but are still considering it, but I'm going to warn you just in case.
The plot plays out basically as follows. Fayt is stranded on a backwards planet after an attack of what I earlier called space pirates, which are actually an alien race called the Vendeeni, and decides to help the locals after he learns of some information that implies that another offworlder has been terrorizing them. He finds out that the guy is not only insane, but also a wanted criminal. A member of the organization Quark, Cliff, comes to the rescue. Due to some science fictiony nonsense, his species developed super powers, so he just ends the guy. Fayt is placed under quasi-arrest as Cliff and his partner, Mirage, head back to headquarters. On the way, however, the group is again attacked the Vendeeni, causing them to crash land on Elicoor II, where most of the game takes place. This place is slightly more advanced than the last planet, but still pretty far off from space flight. Cliff and Fayt are taking prisoner while Mirage ninjas away to go do some covert things. I guess she's good at that. It's actually implied several times over the course of the game that Mirage is something of a mentor figure to Cliff even though she's mostly subservient to him. At any rate, our two haphazard heroes are sitting in prison when a member of the opposing nation in a two-sided war on the continent comes to save them. Nel, the ninja style woman who saves them, is convinced they are engineers from a neutral country and escorts them back to her homeland under the pretense of having them make some sort of super weapon to end the war. Some war stuff happens, and Fayt seriously starts to question why both the Vendeeni and the organization Quark are so interested in him. After hanging around with Nel for a while and finally getting back to the capital, the Vendeeni attack. The reason everyone's interested in Fayt is revealed to the audience, although not to him. The poor kid blacks out afterwards. As it turns out, he's the result of his parents' experiments in genetic engineering. Magic in this universe is cast by drawing specific patterns on things and saying specific words, which basically causes quantum particles to realign the local space into whatever effect the user desired. To accomplish this, many who use magic, or symbology, have the symbols they need carved into themselves. Some, like Fayt, actually have a specific sequence in their DNA that acts as the required symbol. Fayt, under great duress, shoots a giant laser at one of the Vendeeni battleships and takes it out of orbit. He blacks out, and his counterpart and leader of Quark, Maria, arrives to save the day. Before continuing with the plot, I must say that Maria's a pretty epic badass. However, I play the game for Cliff. He's a tongue in cheek womanizer, fairly arrogant, and generally amazing. Fayt's still a hippie. At any rate, everyone finds out that an ancient relic of the planet is what the more advanced civilizations call an out of place artifact. The heroes race against the Vendeeni to secure it, and, of course, succeed. There's some stuff with Fayt's dad, but he dies, so we don't get much substantial out of it. Shortly after this, some sort of super beings that are being called Executioners start destroying space outposts indiscriminately across the galaxy under the orders of a being called the Creator. Based on a small tidbit from Fayt's father, the crew travels to Luna to find out more about his research. As it turns out, Fayt, Maria, and Sophia, Fayt's girlfriend, were all children resulting from genetic experiments. As it turns out, all of their parents were part of the project. Fayt's father decided after talking to an AI on a planet called Styx that the galaxy would need to rebel against, or at least defend itself from, the Creator at some point. Acting upon this information, the crew eventually arrives on Styx while the Executioners set up them up the bomb. They manage to, with the help of the newly recovered Sophia, go through a "time" portal governed by the resident AI. They step through to a new universe, though one that does not appear too much more advanced than their own. At this point, everyone finds out that the universe in which we, the players, live, is part of a fairly popular online game. The universe that created is a bit odd. It is considered a high privilege to work, and society is basically controlled by a few organizations. This is the point where many of the long term fans of this series started disliking the game. For some reason, the universe being a game is seen as cheapening the actions of the previous heroes in the series. I, however, think that a virtual reality is no less important than "actual" reality, but we're venturing dangerously near Plato's cave, so I'll wander away. At any rate, the corporation that creating the game decided that the inhabitants coming into full sentience and developing free will is a bad thing. I have no idea why. As a programmer, I'd be ecstatic. At any rate, the Executioners are revealed to be a clean up program. The crew decides to try to put an end to this, and eventually meets with the group of developers who actually worked on the game. Not wanting to see their creation ruined, they help our heroes by giving them an anti-anti-virus to rid the game universe of the executioners. A side note here, but the gods worshiped by Nel's culture are actually the developers you meet here. Some action to try to stop the deletion of reality takes place, culminating in a fight against the "real" universe's greatest programmer and owner of the game corporation. You win, stop the deletion of the universe (but somehow the owner is deleted), and the characters go about their lives. Yay!
The game ends differently depending on how much other characters cared about you, which can be affected by talking to them in towns in between major plot events. Additionally, there are several characters that are optional in your party. There are, in fact, four such characters, though you can only recruit two. The game also continues after the ending. If you're a big enough fan of the combat system, it's a fun diversion and yields many of the game's best items.
All this now out of the way, my final thoughts on the game are generally positive. The plot is fairly fun, and not one I've run across in a videogame before. The combat's fast and addicting, though the bosses can act as pretty steep difficulty cliffs. If you've not yet played this, or any other game in the Star Ocean series, I highly recommend you do so. This game was in fairly wide print for the PS2, so I don't imagine it would be terribly difficult to pick up a copy. Also, if you're into setting fluff like I am, there's an in-game dictionary that defines the history and technology behind almost everything, which is a mildly interesting read.
I swear, people, I will, one hallowed day, write an entry less than five pages. It might even be this one.
Also, I've retroactively come up with a title for these little essays. They're officially part of a series I'm now calling my Last Rant on Videogames. It's a play on the show's title. It's a little obtuse, I know, but I'm told I have a knack for coming up with obtuse sayings.
One convenient segue later, you might recall in my lastLast Rant that I espoused, not too briefly, the virtues of a game publisher that goes by the monicker of Atlus. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, go read about the first five paragraphs, or hit up the Wikipedia page. I also briefly alluded to a game they published that fell short of the image I have of them. I guess they can't all be winners.
The game to which I refer, which might be more obvious if you followed that last link, is Steambot Chronicles. I'm going to spend a little bit here talking this game up; I only do so that I might tear it down when I've finished, so don't go getting your hopes up. If you want to cut to the chase, you can skip to the summary of all this. Steambot Chronicles is an action adventure style RPG, in a similar style, at least in navigation, to the Zelda games for the N64, except it's on the PS2. In fact, it looks pretty nice. If you're interested now, there's more. The setting for this game is in a post steampunky universe similar to 1920s U.S.A. except the immediate improvement upon cars was to put them on modular locomotion systems, ranging from traditional wheels, to treads, and bipedal leg systems. Additionally, the main chassis for each model was eventually designed to have slots for various appendages. Essentially, you have a modifiable vehicular monstrosity, similar to a Mr. Transformer Head. I wish that was a thing.
So far, this game sounds pretty cool, right? It gets better. Not only do you get to assemble your machine, you get to fight other similarly constructed machines in actual combat wherein you have complete control over the movements of your mechanized death dealer. There is, in fact, an arena should you wish to pit your skills against opponents more threatening than highway bandits. Had I mentioned the bandits? Apparently, because the vehicles are so prevalent and parts are everywhere, lots of organized gangs have sprung up and use the Trotmobiles, as these modified motorized carriages are called, to enforce their will wherever the police do not have the forces to combat them. Needless to say, part of the plot involves fighting them.
Or joining them. As if customizable Trotmobile shenanigans weren't enough, this is also an open RPG where your decisions influence the course of events and you can choose to impose your will upon the weak. In addition to all of this, this is also a dating sim of sorts. A dating sim whose potential prospects are members of your band. Did I mention that you're in a band? You can choose to play basically any instrument you can lay your grubby Trotter mitts on, which is actually a wide variety of instruments. If you're feeling short on cash, you can even set up a stage arm on your ride and give an impromptu concert from the side of the streets. Also, there are a number of fairly large and mildly diverse cities to explore, countryside to see between them, which may be skipped by means of a train if you're bored of traversing the pastures, and a substantial number of side quests to engage in, such as trying to build a flying Trotmobile. Also, you can buy and sell real estate (which you may also live in and acquire all sorts of goods for), and there's ostensibly a cooking minigame or something that I never found. Additionally, for those of you who enjoy this kind of silliness, every main character in the game is named after some sort of spice or seasoning. For the record, you play as a kid named Vanilla. All of this, also framed by young Vanilla suffering from mysterious past syndrome for some potentially juicy plot hooks.
To quickly summarize this before moving on, Steambot Chronicles is an open world action RPG about being in a band, finding love, and fighting giant car robots. Simply amazing.
Unfortunately, burdened by such a wonderful premise, this game was doomed to disappoint from inception. Let's start tearing the gilded facade down, shall we?
First, this game suffers from a lot of lazy writing. Things just happen to the character by chance, which while believable, gets old after the tenth time device is presented. You, through Vanilla, never actively cause events, and simply drift like some sort of new age vagabond upon your metallic steed, sometimes aimlessly because the game refuses to tell you where to go to drive the plot forward. The entirety of Vanilla's mystery background, which is resolved in a somewhat satisfactory manner, is caused by amnesia, rather than having some important character traits prevent Vanilla from disclosing his past in large doses. I assume this is primarily to keep Vanilla as a blank slate so that the player might more easily assume the protagonist's role, but it's a pretty tired plot device. Additionally, you're allowed to make a number of choices throughout the game, but it seems very few of them actually influence the world in any manner, despite the game's assertions to the contrary. Admittedly, the game tells you some decisions do not matter, but this appears to apply to the vast majority of them. The plot itself is pretty formulaic, and the big bad behind everything is either a huge plot twist, or so obvious you called it when you met him depending on your exposure to this sort of thing. It seems that there are a few plot events which must always happen and that the only real thing your decisions influence is which side of the conflict you're on. I don't mind this as much, as branched story telling is certainly no easy task, but it's played up as a big part of the game and never really bears fruit, at least not any so shriveled and sour that I don't even want to make a pie of them.
Well, if the story isn't so great, how about the interpersonal relationships? Well, I'm sorry to say that there's not a whole lot going on there. There are two, possibly three, girls you may court. One is substantially older than you, and the other is your age, obviously infatuated, has an ailing mother and could use some help caring for her, and saved your life when you washed up in a shipwreck while she was picking flowers. The plot seems to be nudging you in a certain direction, but I can't quite tell which. Honestly, the advances of the older girl are a little creepy, considering how much older she acts than the rest of the band. At any rate, wooing your chosen partner is more tedious than fulfilling, as it does not serve to further develop their characters. Most of their respective personality traits and past events that inform the people they are come to you by following the main plot and a bit of city exploration rather than actually interacting with them. As for the other members of the band, they're pretty useless, and don't develop much past the first couple hours of the game. Alongside the promise of an open and malleable world, this flaunted aspect of the game falls quite short.
Being in the band doesn't offer much in the way of gratification either, though it is a pretty interesting mechanic. There are only a small handful of songs. My rather shadowy memory informs me that it's five, but they're all pretty similar and share a huge flaw; they're directly translated from Japanese. While I don't normally have a problem with this, the composition was changed to help the flow, the backup vocals are pretty awful (played by the older love interest, Sage, methinks), and the lyrics range from nonsensical to mediocre.
How playing a song works, provided you're actually performing a concert, is fairly interesting. First, you choose a song from the list your band has worked on. This means you'll be hearing the first few of them A LOT. Everyone in the band performs a couple of instruments, and will be automatically assigned one for the song. If you wish to play one and their backup instrument is being played by another member, you may do so. There are quite a few instruments to play, and they all handle at least somewhat differently. What we're left with is basically a series of timing minigames while you listen to the voice actors wail away. My personal favorite for comedic value is the accordion, which involves moving the two analog sticks left and right as if you were squeezing the box. While not particularly poorly implemented, the monotonous musical menageries your must master may make you mildly miffed as you struggle to play to the best of your ability and find that some instruments do not reward your effort at all. Also, I believe I mentioned you have to listen to the same poorly executed songs again and AGAIN and... You may be seeing my point about this.
At least there's still robot battles. Everyone loves a good robot battle. Sadly, these are either impossible, or incredibly boring. There's not much middle ground. Controlling the robot, while a little tricky, is actually a neat concept. The left analog stick controls the movements of the left half of your chosen locomotion system, while the right stick performs its appropriate complementary action. This can be confusing for a while, but I found that I accustomed quickly. The left and right triggers activate your left and right weapons. You can perform a quick rush by pushing in the analog sticks, block with one back shoulder button, and lift things with the other. There's a variety of tactics available, which seems like it would be a good thing.
Sadly, there is an optimal strategy for most situations. It usually boils down to "strafe and then hit with something" or, for arena matches and duels, "pick up, lob, and hit with something." The machines don't move quite quickly enough to perform more dextrous maneuvers, and most enemies either run away from you to bombard you from a range or immediately attempt to close with you. The variation on the weapons is limited as well; you're stuck with melee weapons that all act extremely similarly, or ranged weapons that are nearly identical that differ only by their damage to monetary cost ratio. Combat quickly degrades to the same boring fight repeated with slight differences in enemy appearances. The exception to this is bosses. I was considering a new paragraph for this, but it can be condensed to jumping upon the behemoth, which the boss always is, and hitting it until you're knocked off. Repeat ad nauseam. Possibly literally if you're easily sickened by motion.
I mentioned a variety of side quests, but the game didn't really hold my interest enough for me to want to finish most of them. They largely involve carrying things between two points, usually using a specially designed body attachment for your trusty Trotter. Sometimes it's carrying a fossil to the museum, sometimes it's delivering carpet, occasionally you can sell water to people. I neglected to mention that the game also claimed you could become a merchant king by buying and selling goods between towns. Apparently what they meant by that is giving water to people in the desert. Fun times. Travel through towns is mostly automated while you're on your vehicle, as you swim through traffic with light systems. That's right, you wait at traffic lights. Enthralling. Sadly, if your destination is pretty far away, this is the fastest way to travel. No GTA style irreverence for traffic laws. You are obligated to follow the guy in front of you until he turns; you actually have no control of your movement while doing this. You just pick a spot and wait. Go make a sandwich. Read a couple pages from a book. Maybe listen to a podcast. You can get a bicycle, mitigating this problem somewhat, but the town's are pretty large and you'll find yourself wandering across them quite a bit. I feel this game would have benefited substantially from a quick travel system of the point and teleport nature, but that might have detracted from the feel of the world a bit.
One thing this game does well is setting. While many of the buildings are useless and generally visually indistinct, the entirety of the game really does feel like a setting I want to be in. I can't help but wonder whether a videogame with tighter focus or possibly a tabletop game could take this setting and make something more engaging out of it.
Speaking of tighter focus, that brings me to my overall criticism with this game. Like ActRaiser, and quite a few other games, this particular attempt at entertainment tries too much and succeeds at none of it. That said, despite what, for me, was a rather scathing review of this thing, it does not fail spectacularly. This whole thing lands squarely in the realm of mediocre. I feel that another year or two in development or a few more months in preproduction narrowing scope could have made this game truly great, but all we received was lost potential. I really would like to see a sequel to this game that improved upon the lessons taught by it, but I don't think it will ever come from the software studio that made it.
That studio, by the way, is Irem, the company behind R-Type and a few other things. Apparently they were making a sequel before the earthquake and subsequent tsunami that hit Japan a while back. Wikipedia tells me that they're no longer in the videogame business and are currently focusing on their first love: gambling machines. Looking at their list of endeavors, I'm sad that a company so multifaceted as this is no longer producing, but I suppose future mediocrity in overly ambitious endeavors is a pitfall they will have avoided.
My conclusion is that if you think this game sounded awesome before I laid waste to the glittering appearances it presented, you might want to pick it up. I found it at a used games store for $15, so I don't think it would be too hard to track down a copy if you're really interested. For me, it was roughly a week's worth of evenings spent trying to find something more in a game that had already offered me everything it had to give.
